


this is my kid

by iron_spider



Series: I love you more than anything (bio dad au) [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bio dad au, F/M, Gen, May and Mary are sisters, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23247040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iron_spider/pseuds/iron_spider
Summary: Pepper sighs heavily but doesn’t look away from him. “There is a woman on line one, her name is Mary Fitzpatrick—”Tony feels like someone breaks an ice cold egg on the top of his head. Frozen yolk spearing down the back of his neck.“—and she says she had your baby, Tony. Two days ago, she’s still in the hospital. She’s one hundred percent sure it’s yours.”Tony stares at her.Yeah, he’s had this happen before. It’s never panned out, always been a cash grab, and if he does have any biological kids out there, the mothers haven’t contacted him. All the ones that tried their hands were bullshitting.But he remembers Mary Fitzpatrick.And without picking up the call, without taking a test, without seeing the baby—he knows.
Relationships: Ben Parker/May Parker (Spider-Man), Mary Parker & Tony Stark, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: I love you more than anything (bio dad au) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1671484
Comments: 149
Kudos: 1381





	this is my kid

Tony remembers the night he met Mary Fitzpatrick. 

He doesn’t remember the conference. He doesn’t remember the fifty page packet or the bullshit with the seating chart or the droning on and on during the presentation. He doesn’t remember. Obie’s voice was in his head, all of that responsibility, all of that _make your father proud_ bullshit, and sometimes Tony can feel the puppet strings on his hands and shoulders. He remembers that. He remembers swallowing that down. 

He remembers, more than anything, that night. The pink and purple strobe lights. The way everything smelled like barbecue. Everyone was stiff upper lip during the conference and not much better when they got on a dance floor. But Mary, he noticed. He hadn’t seen her during the conference, but he saw her that night, name tag and all, like she’d been there behind the scenes, almost as if she’d been waiting for him. She had dark eyes, and her hair almost glowed red when the light hit it the right way. He always loved redheads. 

“I know how often you do this,” she said, as he kissed his way into her hotel room.

“Not as much as you think, I’m sure,” he said, hands on her hips, not at all aware of what kinds of numbers were floating around in her head. He’d lost track a long time ago.

There were a lot of girls, yeah. Yeah, for sure. A few guys, too. All of it is a conglomeration of fuzzy memories that he keeps behind a wall, tucks away the moment he wakes up and it’s all over. Sometimes he forgets. Sometimes he forces himself to, when the memories don’t fade with the resulting headache—lips against a fluttering pulse point, laughter, sweat, a facade he has to keep up, along with the strength of his guard—he washes it all away.

But he remembers Mary Fitzpatrick.

She woke up while he was still pretending to sleep the next morning. She ordered him bacon and buttered toast from room service, and left it on the bedside table, next to his watch. She gripped his shoulder and leaned in, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“Nice night, slick,” she whispered into his ear. 

He heard her heels hitting the carpet as she left, the door closing behind her.

She left him in her hotel room.

He ate the breakfast, stared at the door for a little while, and he didn’t forget. Not on the flight home, not when he lied to Obie, and not with the next girl a few days later. 

He doesn’t like to toot his own horn. Well, yeah, he does, and he does it often. But maybe he knew, like, cosmically, that something was different there. That that night would change his whole fucking life, forever.

~

He doesn’t see her again until After. And before he sees her, he gets a phone call. 

“Tony,” Pepper says, walking in on him struck and frozen by a pile of papers.

“Oh, thank God,” Tony says, taking the opportunity to knock the whole pile aside, watching it cascade like a bunch of dominoes. “Yeah, let’s just say you did that,” he says. “Obie likes you better. He’ll deal with it if it’s you.”

She glances down at the papers as he pushes himself up out of the chair, rejuvenated now that he’s not alone and left with shit he doesn’t want to do. Stark Industries is his father’s legacy, yes, yes, of course, but Jesus, he hates paperwork. He needs somebody else to do the paperwork. He needs _Pepper_ to do the paperwork. But he’s got her doing just about everything else and somehow, the paperwork landed in his lap, this time. He doesn’t know what the hell it said. He got as far as _PROPOSAL FOR FUNDS_ and his brain fucking broke.

“Tony,” Pepper says again, as Tony starts to move past her.

“What, what, what?” he asks, stopping in his tracks. He doesn’t know where the hell he’s going but he’s good at coming up with excuses on the fly. “Don’t tell me you’ve got something else for me to do. Today isn’t happening, Pepper, I can’t take it. I don’t know, nothing’s clicking, it’s like I lost the ability to think.”

“Well, you, uh, better get it back,” she says, giving him a look.

It’s like the wild pace of his brain slows down when he meets her gaze, and he cocks his head at her. He’s come to know Pepper and what she’s coming to him with, whether it’s important to him, important to her, unimportant but necessary to get done—and this seems like...something beyond all that. Something entirely new. 

“What?” he asks, a strike of fear cracking the wall he’s got up on all sides. “What? Somebody die? Who died?” He doesn’t wanna know. He hopes it’s nobody important. He hopes it’s nobody he has to speak for. He doesn’t really like making speeches.

“There’s a woman on line one,” Pepper says. “Apparently she’s called here a couple times in the last day or so but she never got through to me, but Sarah finally passed it off because she thought I could figure it out, whether or not she’s lying, because you know, with you, I’ve done it before.”

Tony narrows his eyes. “What? I feel like you’re talking in code.”

Pepper sighs heavily but doesn’t look away from him. “There is a woman on line one, her name is Mary Fitzpatrick—”

Tony feels like someone breaks an ice cold egg on the top of his head. Frozen yolk spearing down the back of his neck. 

“—and she says she had your baby, Tony. Two days ago, she’s still in the hospital. She’s one hundred percent sure it’s yours.”

Tony stares at her. 

Yeah, he’s had this happen before. It’s never panned out, always been a cash grab, and if he does have any biological kids out there, the mothers haven’t contacted him. All the ones that tried their hands were bullshitting.

But he remembers Mary Fitzpatrick. 

And without picking up the call, without taking a test, without seeing the baby—he knows.

~

May Parker knows her sister, but she didn’t know what in the hell was going on.

They’re close. Close enough to tell each other everything. But the final implosion with Richard went mostly undiscussed. May asked, and Mary said _he’s just not in the picture anymore._ A man she’d been with for the past six years, her damn partner, and all of a sudden he’s not in the picture anymore. At all. Just gone. May knew some details, from when the problems started. She made her own guesses, from how they acted. But she never got the full story on the final slice that severed the relationship for good.

Ben would kiss May goodnight, wrap his arms around her stewing form, and tell her not to worry about it.

She loved him, but she didn’t know how he was so damn _calm_ all the time.

May didn’t say anything when Mary told her she was pregnant. She didn’t say anything. Well, she said plenty to Ben. Plenty of speculation about what the hell Mary and Richard were actually going through, plenty of back and forth about what to do if Richard never came back. Who the hell leaves his woman when she’s pregnant? Not the Richard May knew. He wasn’t the most spectacular person, but he wouldn’t do _that_. She thought about contacting him, held the phone up to her ear more than one time, fingers poised to peck out his number. But Ben would always give her this look, and she knew—she knew—she had to let her big sister handle this. If she wanted the man there, she’d get him there. 

So May didn’t say anything. Well. She didn’t say anything she wanted to say. Not to Mary’s face, anyway. She was there, as she should be, and Ben got the brunt of her bad feelings. But she supported Mary and her lack of information, and tried not to explode like a goddamn volcano.

But then, five days away from the finish line, Mary said a phrase that May never thought she’d hear.

“It’s Tony Stark’s baby.”

May just laughed at her. She was folding all the clothes from the shower, loading them into the old dresser. “Okay. So we’re finally getting into it. Richard was role-playing? Was that the beginning of his downfall?”

“No, it’s—Peter is literally Tony Stark’s baby. As in, I slept with Tony Stark at that conference in New Orleans and he got me pregnant.”

May felt—frozen. One of those terrible moments that she only experienced every so often, because she prided herself on keeping her head. Even though she was getting worse and worse at it. She turned around, slowly. Mary was still sitting in the rocking chair, cradling her belly, and she didn’t even have the good sense to look nervous.

“What are you talking about?”

“Exactly what I said.”

“But what are you _talking about?_ ”

“How would you like me to phrase it differently?”

May just stared at her. She felt insane. She felt _insane_. She scoffed, closing her eyes, trying not to explode or die or something. “It’s—the baby is _not_ Richard’s?”

“I never told you it was Richard’s,” Mary said. Now she had the nerve to look _incredulous_. “You just assumed that. We’re done, May, I told you that, I said that, and yet still, you assumed it was his.”

May scrunched one of the little outfits in angry fists, and didn’t react to Mary’s look in response. “You—I—you’re saying— _what the hell else was I supposed to think? Because I never would have jumped to Tony fucking Stark!”_

Mary rolled her eyes and looked away from her, running her hands over her stomach like the baby could hear the cursing.

“He was at the conference?”

“Yes.”

“And you slept with him?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure it’s his?”

“I’m positive. Richard and I hadn’t slept together for like four months, and there was no one else.”

May needed a moment. May needed several moments. But she kept talking anyway. “You’re literally five minutes away from bringing this baby into the world—”

“Five minutes? Five days. Exaggerator.” 

Tony Stark wasn’t even like a real person, in May’s mind. He was an idea. He was a rich brat. He was someone they would never, ever know, whether Mary wanted to know him or not.

So she felt. Fucking insane. 

“Have—Jesus, I can’t believe I’m entertaining this—have you _told him?”_

Mary just stared at her. And that’s when May’s waterworks started. She dropped the little giraffe onesie, and covered her face with her hands. She hated to cry, she hated to goddamn cry, but this was way too much. She hated nonsensical things. And this was something out of a nightmare. Not Tony Stark. Not him. They’re not in a fucking fantasy sitcom. 

“May, I will,” Mary said. “I swear.”

“When?” May wailed, into her palms.

“After the baby’s born. Right after. Promise. Cross my heart.”

May was. Flabbergasted.

~

“Why do you have that look on your face?” Pepper asks him. And then she keeps talking before he can say anything. “Is it because you know what I know? That she’s not lying? And this is your baby? Is that what the look is?”

She almost sounds mad at him. He cracks his jaw. “Line one?” he asks. 

“Line one,” she says, one eyebrow raised. 

She stands there and watches as he walks back over to his desk, and his heart is beating like a steel drum. But no, he’s not nervous. No, his mouth isn’t dry. Why is she watching him? Why is she looking at him like that?

Tony perches on the front of the desk, his hand hovering over the phone. He glances over at Pepper. “Is this something I need an audience for? Do you not trust me?” A beat. “Don’t answer that.”

“I’ll wait outside the door,” Pepper says, nodding at him. 

“Will call you if—yeah.” Tony cracks his jaw again.

“Uh huh.”

She leaves, and the door slams behind her. Tony runs his hand over his face, and doesn’t let himself think about cutting the call off before he can even answer it. Because he totally could. He watches the blinking red line. He can hear Howard’s voice in his head. No real words, just a rash of yelling. How Tony knew him best. 

He sighs, and picks up the call.

“Uh, Tony Stark,” he says.

“Wow,” Mary’s voice says. “I finally caught you.”

“I’ve got an incredible spam system here,” he says, chewing on his lower lip.

“You’ve got that right,” she says. “I can’t even tell you how many women I’ve spoken to trying to get to you, Tony. This last one was good, though, she was better. Sounded like she had more brain cells than all the others put together.”

He’s about to say something about Pepper when he hears the baby crying in the background. He’s like a deer in headlights. His eyes strain because he forgets to blink. 

Mary laughs a little bit, and the crying stops. “I suppose she told you what I told her.”

“Uh, yeah, are we...are we sure?” he asks, tilting his head. “Cause, uh—”

“No ‘cause, uh’, we’re sure. It’s you, that’s it.”

He gets a brief flash of that night, like he’s digging for gold in a dark cave—he remembers her, but the night itself, all its details, are a blur. He tries to drag out some of the things she said, and nearly gives himself a headache doing it.

“Wasn’t there, uh, wasn’t there—a man, or something, a boyfriend, I—I remember you mentioning—”

“Yeah, I said my boyfriend and I had just split up,” Mary says, more cutting and curt than she was a moment before. “It wasn’t working—we don’t need to discuss this right now, I’m one hundred percent sure this is your baby, but I know you need confirmation, and they can do that here, I already asked, they’re prepared—it’s a quick—you know, a quick thing. So I’d like you to come to, uh—where I am. Luckily we’re both in New York. And you can meet Peter.”

“Peter?” Tony asks, without thinking.

“The baby,” Mary says.

Tony hears other voices in the background but he hears Howard’s again, too. More yelling, but the words are forming now, dredging up from the ether.

_You’ll never be capable of being a real adult. Never. You’re always gonna be you, you’re always gonna be this. You’re a goddamn embarrassment, Tony. I’m embarrassed of you._

It feels like a fucking age passes, but he still doesn’t say anything.

“Jesus, you talked a lot more the night I met you,” Mary says. She sounds irritated, and tired, and Pepper did say she had the baby two days ago, and he feels like he’s standing underneath a spotlight or something, as if his mother is watching, as if his father is hollering, and he hears the baby make another noise.

His baby.

Supposedly. 

_Probably._

_Why the hell is he so sure?_

“Alright, yeah, I’ll call back another time,” Mary says, and the phone line goes dead before she even finishes her final word.

“Shit,” Tony breathes, still holding onto the receiver, and he slowly puts it back down on the cradle, trying to concentrate on literally anything else so Howard’s disappointment will stop ringing in his ears.

The door opens and Pepper steps inside, resting her hand on her hip.

“You listen in?” Tony asks, barely able to look at her. He feels waterlogged.

“Not very good,” Pepper says, shaking her head. “I get it, you don’t want a kid in your life, but this—”

He can’t even begin to think about this. It’s not so much about what he wants, but it’s about what he deserves. And underneath all the finery and interviews and manufactured laughter, he knows he doesn’t deserve a tenth of what he allows himself. But even all that is just surface level. Just things. Nothing...of worth.

Tony yearns. But he doesn’t let anybody know about that. He doesn’t even acknowledge it, himself. It only bobs back up from where he tried to drown it, years ago, when things like this happen. 

“Tony,” Pepper’s voice says, going soft. 

“Hey, it’s, uh—did you get her number? Can we trace her back? I kinda messed that one up and I don’t like, uh, where I—”

One of the receptionists slips into the room beside Pepper, and Tony stops talking, trying to listen to what she whispers. He can’t hear shit, of course, and Pepper’s got that intent look on her face that she gets sometimes—her eyes flick up to glance at him. He narrows his own, his hand still hovering by the phone, and Pepper nods to the blonde, ushering her back out again. 

“What? What?” Tony asks, when Pepper looks at him again. “Is she having my baby too? Or did she already have it? How old? Boy or girl?”

“Mary Fitzpatrick’s sister is on line one now—”

“I did _not_ sleep with her sister,” Tony says, cutting his hand through the air. “That I’m one hundred percent on.”

Pepper rolls her eyes. “Do you want me to scare her off or do you want me to answer it?”

Tony feels like he’s running a fucking marathon. He doesn’t know how to deal with this shit, he’s not prepared, he needs to be fucking prepared. He wipes at his eye and picks up the phone before he can think about it too hard, selecting line one.

Maybe he knows it’ll be a verbal lashing. Maybe he answers because he fucking deserves it.

“Tony Sta—”

“Tony Stark,” a different woman’s voice says. “My name is May Parker, I’m Mary’s sister.”

“Well, hel—”

“I don’t care who you are, I don’t care how much money you’ve got, I don’t care how many women you’ve slept with. Somehow, some goddamn how, you slept with my sister Mary, and you made this beautiful baby angel, and I’d like you to get your ass down here so we can get that shit in writing after a test. Frankly, I don’t want anything out of you, I don’t want this angel to have a goddamn playboy bunny for a stepmother one day, but Mary wants to prove it to you and she wants you to see the baby and give you a…” 

She sighs, heavily. 

“A chance to be in his life. I don’t know. I doubt you’ll take it, Stark, knowing who you are and how you operate, but this isn’t a goddamn tabloid, this is my sister, so you need to get down here. They can test the paternity and figure it out and get confirmation all around. Couple days, tops. She finally got the nerve up to call you and I’m not gonna allow you to stand her up. Tony Stark or not.”

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. He has no idea what May looks like, but he can almost see her. 

“Where are you?” he asks, feeling strangely defeated. 

She’s quiet for a minute, like she didn’t expect him to ask that, or answer at all.

“New York Presbyterian,” May says. 

Tony glances at the clock. It’s a little after noon. He knows he’s probably got other shit to do, no matter how much whining he was doing before all this happened, but he’s pretty positive Pepper will push it all to make this happen. 

He feels like he’s on the precipice of something. No, he doesn’t feel, he fucking knows. 

He doesn’t let himself think. He can’t, he literally can’t, or he’ll do something wrong.

He’s gonna do something wrong anyway. Because that’s what he fucking does. 

“I’ll be there,” he says, his voice cracking.

~

He did have a board meeting, and a seminar appearance, and the paperwork was important, but Pepper somehow arranged it all, got it all together, and got him in the car. He usually likes to drive himself, despite employing a very competent driver, but he lets the very competent driver take this one. Happy doesn’t ask questions.

They park out front and Tony sits there when he’s supposed to get out. He stares at his shoes. Should he be wearing dress shoes to the hospital? This isn’t a fucking funeral. But it is a new baby. A new baby from a one night stand with a woman he doesn’t know. A smart woman, with a scary sister.

A new baby. Probably his baby. How the hell long do paternity tests take? Shit, with all his bullshit, he hasn’t gotten to this part. He has no idea what the hell he’s doing.

“I’m sweating, am I sweating?” Tony asks, looking over at Pepper. “I feel like I’m sweating.”

“This is just the test,” Pepper says, gently. She’s already got the door open. “Which will just be—them swabbing the inside of your cheek or something.”

“She wants me to see the baby,” Tony says. “The baby.”

“The baby,” Pepper repeats, like she didn’t understand him.

“She wants me to see it,” Tony says. Mary said the name Peter.

Why the hell does he believe her? She could have slept with anybody. She slept with him, she could have slept with anybody else. She could be trying to pin this kid on him. He could be down here wasting his fucking time for nothing.

There’s a nagging voice at the back of his mind that says _she didn’t seem like that kind of girl._

“Come on, Mr. Stark,” Pepper says, raising her eyebrows at him.

He blows out a breath and regresses into the back of his own head. He puts on his sunglasses and tries to breathe. “Lead the way, Miss Potts.”

~

Pepper does the talking.

She gets the room number. Tony doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. He does this sometimes, when he doesn’t want to be somewhere, when he’s afraid, and it’s like he’s looking through stained glass. Like he’s in a bubble. Like he’s bulletproof. He’s Tony Stark, he’s a newspaper headline, he’s rumors, he’s a legacy. He lives in that, he embodies it, and forces everything else to the side to tackle later. To tackle never. To have nightmares about.

He feels like everyone is watching him. He doesn’t look. He follows Pepper down the hallways, stands too far from her in the elevator, and they get to the maternity ward. Everything is in slow fucking motion. He wants to turn around, leave, scream into his hands in the car. But Pepper leads him to room 328 anyway, and doesn’t make the mistake of asking him before she knocks.

Tony thinks she might have had a conversation with Mary on the side, behind his back. That Mary might have told her how this was gonna go down. Tony has just enough time to feel betrayed at this possibly imagined slight when the door opens.

Slowly, like everything else.

A small, dark-haired woman, wearing bug-eyed glasses and a grimace opens the door. She looks him up and down, not sparing Pepper a glance, and she crosses her arms over her chest, raising her eyebrows. 

“Wow,” she says, finally looking at Pepper, her gaze softening. It hardens again when she looks back at Tony, and he clears his throat as Pepper leads him in. 

“May?” Pepper asks.

“That’s me,” May says, nodding, as the two of them walk in. She pushes the door closed, and she keeps staring at Tony.

He purposely doesn’t look back at the beds. There are two of them, both occupied, from what he saw out of the corner of his eye. One baby is fussing, and if there’s another in the room, it’s quiet. 

He feels like he’s in a fish bowl. He tunes in and out—sees May and Pepper make introductions, sees Pepper gesture towards him. May looks at him like he’s the dredges of the earth, and also, like he’s a skittish horse that could be spooked away with the slightest movement. 

He sees that the fussy baby is in the bed closest to the door, with a father-looking guy hovering over it and the woman in the bed. Can someone look like a father? Is it a certain kind of mustache? A twinkle in his eye? A particular brand of sweater? Tony doesn’t fucking know. But that’s not the baby he’s looking for. 

“They’re right over here, the doctor’s with her,” May says. She glances up at him as Pepper crosses in front, and she acts like she doesn’t want to look him in the eye. “Doctor’s been—sorta waiting on you, since the phone calls. Just in case.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna bolt,” Tony says, hardly recognizing his own voice.

Pepper looks back at him like she doesn’t recognize it either.

“Good,” May says, the first word without venom. 

He can peer around the curtain covering the second bed now, and Mary looks exactly the same as she did when they first met. He winces at that, because why the fuck wouldn’t she, but he doesn’t have enough time to beat himself up before his eyes are landing on the baby. 

The smallest thing in the whole universe, wrapped up and cradled in Mary’s arms. Sleeping soundly. He has a little soft hat on his head, and Tony can see tufts of hair sticking out in front. He looks like a painting, or an old photo, or something entirely breakable. 

Tony remembers when his mother would bring him to the hospital to visit, when they were sponsoring a new wing or something, and she’d talk so softly when they were even in the fucking hallway of maternity, constantly reminding him that babies’ heads had to be supported, like that was a problem he was gonna have any time soon. 

He knows he doesn’t have any lingering baby memories, because who the hell does, but he can’t remember a time when his father held him. He can’t remember a time when his father made him feel loved. It still feels like the most massive loss, losing him, because Tony lost his chance, too. He lost his chance to ask why. To figure it out. To try and earn that love that he’d somehow never been worthy of. 

He’d never even seen a photo of his father holding him. He doesn’t think one exists. 

Tony is absolutely terrified. 

“Wow,” the doctor says. She’s a tall blonde woman standing beside the bed, and she quickly starts grabbing at a small kit she’s got next to her.

“Yeah, but you don’t need to—attack him as soon as he comes in,” Mary says, gently rocking the baby.

Pepper gives Tony a look and his heart skips a couple beats, and he swallows hard, stepping closer to her. 

“No, no, attack away,” Tony says, anything to avoid looking at the baby, even if it means giving them the ammo to say the baby is his. 

“Just a cheek swab,” the doctor says, slipping on gloves. “Won’t take a second.”

“Uh huh.”

Thankfully, both May and Pepper converge on Mary while Tony gets his fucking cheek swabbed, and no, it doesn’t take more than a second, but when the doctor takes the sample away and puts it in a plastic bag he feels like the walls are crumbling. He doesn’t hear Howard’s voice but he can feel his presence, and now, all of a sudden, he’s thinking about Obie too, and what the hell he’s gonna think. He knows it shouldn’t matter, but it does, and it will, and Tony doesn’t feel like his own person right now. Does he fucking ever? He tries to present that persona, the man who has it all and gets what he wants, but he knows that’s not him.

He has no idea what he wants. But he sure as shit doesn’t have it.

“Should take two days, max,” the doctor says, closing up her kit. “Do you want me to contact you—where would I—”

“She’ll tell me,” Tony says, shoving his chin out in Mary’s direction.

“Thank you,” Mary calls, as the doctor leaves the room, and they exchange a couple more words about the shape of his future, but he doesn’t catch them over the void of his own head.

Mary’s looking at him now. “Thank you for coming, Tony,” she says, softly.

He feels like making it an innuendo to be a dick, _(yeah, you’re welcome, look what you got out of it)_ but he doesn’t. “Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat, his face burning.

He doesn’t look at the baby. He doesn’t look at the baby. He doesn’t look at the baby.

Mary sighs. “I don’t want to...uproot your life or anything like that,” she says, glancing at her sister. “I just—well, if he’s yours, and I’m—there’s no way he’s not yours—”

“We understand,” Pepper says, before Tony can say anything, even though he doesn’t know what the hell he’d say anyway. 

“We’ll find out soon enough,” May says, sitting on the side of the bed. She looks at him like she can see right through him, but he knows if she could that she wouldn’t want him anywhere near this baby.

He looks. He doesn’t mean to look, but he looks. Babies aren’t usually cute. They’re supposed to be cute, and society says they’re cute, but usually they look like strange, small, featureless adults. But even though he’s sleeping and his eyes aren’t open, Peter is cute. And then he scrunches his eyes and lets out a yawn too big for a baby his size—all three women start preening, and Tony feels a little dizzy, because once again, he knows. Maybe because of her surety, maybe because of the way he looks, he has no idea, he doesn’t get it, but he _knows_. No test needs to tell him. 

He’s terrified.

“Tired little man,” Pepper laughs.

“He barely cries,” May says, like she’s trying to sell the idea of him. “He’s so calm, he’s so sweet, he’s the perfect baby. He’s an angel.”

“Tony,” Mary’s voice says. “Did you wanna—did you wanna hold him?”

Tony clears his throat, looking down at his feet. His heart speeds up like she asked him to stand on top of a landmine, and even that seems preferable, and he knows that line of thinking means something is wrong with him. But he knows that. He’s safe in that. Something’s wrong with him. He’s unsafe with the idea of holding this baby. This baby. 

“He’s sleeping,” he says, voice rough. 

“I’m holding him,” Mary says. “He’s fine with that. We could do a transfer.”

“You’re his mother.”

May laughs, and no one says the very easy comeback he left lying there. He feels like he’s fucking gonna lose it, standing here. Pepper usually knows exactly what the hell he wants, that’s why he likes her so much (likes her, likes her, what the hell is happening) but she’s distracted by the baby now, the baby who yawns again and distracts them all from trying to get Tony to hold him. 

_Thanks, Peter._

“Pep, we’ve got that thing in Yonkers,” Tony says, without thinking about it. Their code phrase. The ‘get me out of here’ phrase.

She glances over her shoulder at him and almost looks betrayed. “Right,” she says, despite the look. “Jesus, I forgot. How could I forget?”

“Don’t know. How could I remember?”

“Thanks for fitting us in your schedule,” May says. She doesn’t look at him.

~

_He looks like you, Tony._

_He looks like a baby, Pepper, all babies look the same._

_I don’t think so._

~

That night Pepper informs him that Mary put his last name on the birth certificate. It’s just waiting for a signature, when the paternity is proven. Pepper doesn’t seem bothered by this fact, doesn’t seem to think there’s any legal issues with it, and despite the lack of formal proof, she already seems convinced that it’s his baby, anyway. 

He knows, too. He already knew. But the last name thing sends him careening off a canyon side he built in his own head, and he locks himself in his bedroom and has one of the most massive breakdowns he’s had in his life. He sits on the floor beside his bed half naked, halfway through a bottle of whiskey and two thirds into a flask of vodka, focusing and fixating on the name _Stark._

He feels like a failure, and not because he’s brought a baby into this world and screwed up his own future. No, because this baby is a Stark, and it’ll be screwed up by a Stark just like he was if he has any hand in its life. His life. _His_. It’s not an it, it’s a Peter, a baby who sleeps and yawns and looks like a fucking angel with his little blue baby hat. 

Tony faceplants into his Persian rug. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, like he’s got some cosmic connection to this baby and he can hear him across town and can suddenly understand English. “I’m sorry, Peter. You don’t want me. You really fucking don’t, kid. I can’t do this.”

Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.

~

The test comes back positive. Mary faxes over the results, and the doctor calls to confirm. It’s what he already knew. He already knew. He staves off another breakdown by nearly drowning himself in the shower, and after three shots of vodka he makes a plan. His version of a plan. A semblance of a plan. 

He comes up with something.

~

May helps Ben carry in the new dresser, and her husband never shows that something’s overwhelming him, even if it is. 

“Why’s it so heavy?” she tries, as they weave through the front door. Ben starts the long back-up to Peter’s room, trusting May to tell him if he’s moving in the wrong direction.

“Guess this is the kind of dresser a billionaire’s money buys,” Ben says. He grits his teeth, only for a moment, glancing over his shoulder as they keep going. 

“Maybe next time I can ask him to send a couple guys to load all this stuff in,” May says. 

“Still real strange to me you’re on speaking terms with Tony Stark,” Ben says, huffing and puffing a little bit. They’re almost there. Her arms feel like they’re gonna plain snap off, especially now that her focus is shifting to Tony Fucking Stark. Ghost of Christmas Fucking Past.

“Speaking terms,” she says, as they cross the threshold into the baby’s room. “Meaning, I’ve seen him three times in the past two months and he’s bought every fucking piece of furniture in this house?”

“Honey,” Ben tries, because whenever she curses and the baby is so much in the house, he doesn’t like it. But Peter and Mary are in the kitchen. May can still hear her singing. 

“I don’t know why the hell we haven’t called him out on sending this stuff over here but never having guys to help us get it in,” May says, shaking her head.

“I guess he thought they’d come with the truck,” Ben says, smiling.

May glares at him, and looks away. “She’s set for life,” she says, as they put the dresser down where the old one was. They’re both breathing hard and trying not to. “She will never want another damn thing. Well, other than a father for her baby.”

Ben leans on the dresser with one hand and sighs, adjusting his glasses with the other. “Still can’t believe I haven’t met the man, considering he’s been here.”

“You should have met him on the 12th, but he missed that one—Pepper said it was a last minute meeting, I’ve got no idea, but he should have been here,” May says, hand on her hip. She watches as Ben sighs again, and she knows they’ve got six or seven more things to get out of that moving truck before the guy can leave. But they’re not paying for it, and she’s content to let him sit there. “I think he’ll miss the next meeting time they agreed on, too. You know he’s never held the baby, right? You know this?”

“You’ve mentioned it,” Ben says, glancing up at her. 

“Well.”

He pats her on the hip as he moves back out of the room. “Glass of water and then back at it.”

“Ben, he’s never held the baby,” May says, following him. “He’s thrown as much money as this situation as he could, but he comes here, stands around like a crumbling fuc—like a crumbling statue, and then he leaves without doing anything. It’s like he was never here to begin with.”

They move into the kitchen and Mary looks over her shoulder. She’s got Peter in the adjustable inside stroller thing Tony bought, and Peter stares up at his mother with that little lopsided smile he’s been putting to use so much lately. Mary pushes him back and forth, and keeps working on lunch as Ben grabs two water bottles.

“You going off again?” Mary asks, raising her eyebrows at May.

“Who would she be if she wasn’t?” Ben asks, smiling too. 

“Tony hasn’t held this _angel_ ,” May says, her heart clenching as she swoops in and gathers Peter up in her arms. “This little precious burrito.” She cradles him, and curses Tony Stark in her head. How can he even look at Peter and not want to hold him? Smother him in kisses? “It’s strange,” she says. “His own child and he knows it, and still, he acts like this.”

“He wasn’t, uh—” Ben’s eyes cut over to Mary before he finishes his sentence.

“He wasn’t ready for a baby,” Mary finishes for him. “And I guess we should. Be happy we’ve gotten as much as we’ve gotten.”

“I’m happy,” May says, rocking Peter back and forth. “I’m fine. We’ve got diapers enough for seventeen babies. We’ve got top of the line everything. Things I never ever thought this place would see. I’m just sorry for him. Because there’s something wrong with him.”

“May,” Ben says.

“There is,” May says. “A man who doesn’t hold his child isn’t a man at all.”

~

May gives him a picture of Peter when he shows up, acting as if she thinks it’ll be the last time. Whenever he’s in the room with the baby he has to keep his sunglasses on, and it’s like he’s fighting against the tides, like he’s trying to drown and swim to shore all at once. He builds another wall. He builds two more. He reinforces them with steel. He makes himself the worst version of himself, because maybe then they’ll hate him and tell him never to come back. Maybe then he can send money in peace, and bury this so deep that he’ll forget it exists. That only his unconscious mind will want it, and his conscious mind will continue to know that he’d be the worst fucking father in the history of the world, and he’s a piece of shit for even entertaining the idea. He’s a father in name only. He doesn’t look anything like that asshole in the hospital, the guy hovering over the second bed. 

He doesn’t look at the picture. He shoves it in his pocket, and probably bends the edges.

He stays for less than an hour, less than the amount of time that Mary requested when he brought her his half-baked plan and she had to form it and mold it and make it into something meaningful. 

She follows him out onto the street, holding the baby. His heart nearly drops into his gut when he hears her coming, and when he turns his gaze immediately finds Peter.

The kid is gonna be six months old in one week. He’s got even more hair now, curly and wild, and his eyes are a deep kind of brown, gigantic, and always searching him out. He doesn’t try to reach for Tony like he does for Mary, but he’s always looking at him, like he’s considering who he is, why he shows up so few and far between. Tony’s seen him cry at strangers before, like the delivery guy and a neighbor, but he doesn’t cry when he’s around. His little fingers clench in Mary’s shirt and she adjusts him against her side.

“You’re gonna miss this,” she says.

“What?” he asks, stupidly. 

“Him needing you,” she says. She whips some of her hair out of her eyes, and Peter laughs, twisting it in his hand gently. “You’re missing him. His smiles, his laughter, his little—milestones. I know you want to hold this baby, Tony. I know all this bravado you put on, with the sunglasses and the expensive stuff, it’s—a facade. It’s not you.” She steps a little bit closer and looks at him sideways, and he can’t stop looking at the baby. His baby. Peter is regarding him again, calmly, his eyes so big. 

Mary shakes her head. “I know you’re in there and I know you think you’re not good enough for all this, but you are good enough for all this. But I can’t—I can’t wait on you forever. So if you keep this up, and if you don’t—actively hold our child on the six month mark, I’m gonna—I’m gonna stop trying. I can’t keep justifying that to May. So be there, and make your own choices. Don’t let your head guide you anymore. You’re going the wrong way.”

Peter makes a little noise, blinking at him, but before Tony can say anything else, Mary turns and heads back into her place, shutting the door behind her.

~

_She doesn’t want me there, not really._

_So why did she say that?_

_I don’t know, Pep. Guilt?_

_She’s not guilting you. You’ve already given her everything. She wants you to be a father to the baby, Tony. Do you want to be? Do you want to?_

~

The picture May gave him is simple. A 4x6 glossy picture of Peter, sitting on the owl baby blanket Tony got him, holding the blue penguin Tony got him, wearing the purple striped onesie Tony picked out himself on one of his bulk panic shopping days. He didn’t do the shopping often himself, a lot of the time he let Pepper do it, since she was still the only person who knew the full details about what was going on here. But everything in this photo were things he’d touched, picked out with his own hands. 

_You’re going the wrong way._

That’s his kid. In the photo. His own flesh and blood. He’s got documents and shit to prove it. And he hasn’t held him yet. Tony has a child, in the world, and he hasn’t held him yet. He’s barely spoken to him. Only looked at him like he’s looking at someone else’s kid, or through a gauzy lens of panic and feigned disinterest. Who pretends to be disinterested in a baby? His own baby? A fucking mess of a person, that’s who. Him. Tony Stark, Human Disaster. 

He stares at the picture, feeling like his head is gonna explode. He hasn’t focused on anything going on six months now. Obie is gonna figure it out soon, if he hasn’t already. Happy must fucking know, since he’s been driving him there and back. There are people that track his deliveries, they’ll know. The whole world is gonna converge on this baby. He’s gonna destroy his fucking child even when he’s trying to keep away from him. 

Tony presses the photo to his chest and sinks down lower in his bed, trying to figure out what the hell his brain is doing. Something’s not clicking, some nerves aren’t firing, something, anything, nothing, everything, none of it is fucking right. He’s not right. 

“Jarvis,” he says.

“ _Yes sir?_ ”

“What would mom say?” he asks, sounding dumb as all hell. He swallows hard and closes his eyes, already drunk enough to fall asleep if he lets himself. His head is pounding.

“ _Your mother would say that she is proud of you, sir._ ”

“For what?” Tony scoffs. “Abandoning my child?”

“ _She always trusted you to make the right decision._ ”

Tony knows it’s true, and somehow, that makes him feel worse.

~

Tony ignores it. Meaning he doesn’t make any decisions, and he panics, and for once, he buries himself in his work. Asks Pepper for obligations, meets with people, pretends it isn’t all happening. He knows she can see right through him.

He’s sitting in his office, reading over a recommendation letter from Rhodey, when the door opens slowly. Pepper steps inside, and it’s strangely reminiscent of the day he first spoke to Mary about Peter. Tony doesn’t know if he’s just associating everything with that now, whether he wants to or not, but then he notices the look on her face.

“What?” he asks, struck by that look. She’s pale, and seems a little unsteady on her feet, which is very unlike her. “What happened?” 

It reminds him of when they told him his parents were dead, and his mind immediately jumps to the baby. What if something happened to the baby? What if something happened to his baby before he ever held him? Six months into his life and he never held him and something _happens—_

“Mary’s gone,” Pepper says, looking up and meeting Tony’s eyes.

He realizes he’s standing, though he doesn’t remember getting up. “Gone? What—gone?”

“She’s gone,” Pepper says again, fast, chewing on her lower lip. “Uh, she—she passed. Yes—yesterday, uh. Yesterday. Car accident.”

Tony’s head—he’s fucking reeling. He feels like he’s gonna throw up. “The baby, what—where’s Peter, is Peter okay?”

“He’s okay,” Pepper says, drawing in a breath. “He’s with May and Ben.”

Tony visibly slumps, taking a step back he doesn’t mean to take, but he’s still left with the kind of shock that chills his bones. “Are you sure this—are they fucking with me to try and get me over there? Because I was gonna go, on the six—Wednesday. Day after tomorrow. I was gonna go, I’d decided I was gonna go and pick him up and all that. I’d decided.” He hadn’t decided anything. But now he’s close to collapsing and lying comes easy, even though Pepper can probably tell.

“It’s real,” Pepper says, softly. “And we need to—get you over there. May wants you over there now and you need to go.”

~

He goes without protest. He’s had tragedy in his life so this feels horrifically familiar, but he’s still drowning in it, what it means. She always seemed so alive. So vibrant. He remembers her smile, that night. Remembers her singing Beatles songs to Peter. Tony is a grown adult but death still looms like a specter, and he doesn’t understand it. Why it takes who it takes. Why its ghosts are so loud.

He was just a boil on her side. A nuisance. Something she had to worry about, somebody she had to sway. And now she’s gone. 

May Parker is a powerhouse. But the way she looks when he walks into the room, despite her husband stalwart at her side—well, it sends chills down Tony’s spine. She sits on the couch he bought Mary, slumped over and chewing on her thumbnail. May is nerves she tries to hide, but right now, nothing is hidden. 

Peter is on the owl mat, fenced off close to the TV. He’s sitting up very tentatively, still practicing his new skill, and he looks up when Tony walks in. He makes a little happy noise, clapping his hands on his knees. 

He doesn’t understand his mother is dead.

Tony wants to ask why they didn’t call him immediately. But what the hell was he gonna do? He couldn’t help. A nuisance. Someone in the way.

He glances behind him and realizes that Pepper is leaving him in here alone, gently closing the door behind her. He swallows hard, and then May starts talking.

“Uh, I didn’t get to speak with her,” she says. “It was all—it was a drunk driver, and the car was—just—completely wrapped around the light pole, she was—” Her voice cracks and Ben puts his hand on her shoulder. 

“May, Jesus, I’m so sorry,” Tony says, still standing there close to the door, close to the baby. Peter makes another little yelping noise, looking up at him with those eyes. “When’s the—I’ll help with the funeral, all that, whatever you need, I can—”

“I don’t wanna talk about that,” May says, fast. “I don’t want to think about it.”

Tony feels like he’s gonna fall over. “May, I just—”

“I don’t want you to have this baby,” May says, shaking her head. It knocks all the air out of him, and he stands, swaying. “I don’t think you care at all about this baby—”

“May,” Ben says. 

“No, I don’t,” May says, getting up from her seat. She shakes with anger, with grief, and Tony feels dizzy. “You know that I don’t, he knows that I don’t, but the thing is— _Mary_ was desperate for him to want this baby. I don’t know if it’s because of what went on with our own father, I don’t know, I don’t care, I just know that—I just know that my sister is gone and it’s not my choice. It’s her choice, and I—I’m gonna try for her, with you. This one last time.”

Tony hangs his head, closes his eyes, feels half fucking dead himself, and he’s waiting for this to be a joke, he’s waiting for Mary to come out and yell surprise and laugh in his asshole face, but the air remains stale and the truth gets more solid. 

Ben catches May’s arm and whispers in her ear, and Tony has a brief moment to contemplate how he’s only had one conversation with the man since this all started, and that’s his own fucking fault, too. He’s been a ghost here, before there was a ghost.

“No,” May says to Ben, harsh, and she starts to march over to where Tony is.

“Listen,” Ben says, as if he’s trying to speak before she does. “We’ll take care of Peter. We’ll adopt him. We can do that—”

“We love the baby,” May says, and as she gets closer he can see how red her eyes are. “We love that baby, we appreciate that baby for the miracle he is, so we’ll take him. We will. But Jesus, Tony, I—I don’t _want to_ , but I have to give you a moment. I know I have to give you a moment, because Mary would rail on and on and on about giving you a moment and now she’s not here and I—I absolutely could not live—live with myself if I didn’t do that for her.”

“May,” Ben says again. “Just try and relax, honey. Breathe.”

But she marches past Tony, over to the playpen, and lifts Peter out of there. Tony’s heart beats in his throat as she approaches him, and Peter kicks his feet, a small smile on his face.

“Hold your baby,” May says. She doesn’t shove him at Tony, or anything like that, but for the first time, Peter reaches out for him, arms stretching and fingers wide. Tony’s first inclination is to run, to get the fuck out of here and never come back, but it’s like something guides him forward, something like his better judgement, or someone looking out for him, someone a lot smarter than he is.

And Peter is reaching out for him.

Tony takes him from May, like he’s taking something glass and breakable, and he holds him against his hip, one arm underneath him and his other hand supporting the baby’s side.

Tony doesn’t like to stop and smell the roses. He doesn’t really consider moments or their weight, and half the time he’s speeding through his life like he’s trying to get somewhere else, this place past a finish line that he can’t see and can’t form in his head. He doesn’t often acknowledge things that are bigger than him because he already feels small enough, and then he’ll realize just how much he’s fucked up, how much of his life is irreparable, and how he keeps pounding in crooked nails and making it worse and worse and worse, with a smile on his face and rose-tinted glasses, like none of it matters.

But as much as he doesn’t want to know it—he knows this matters.

Peter squeals happily, his eyes intent and sure now, one of his little chunky hands braced on Tony’s shoulder and the other immediately planting itself on Tony’s cheek. He pats his hand there a couple times, and he hums to himself, rocking back and forth a little bit. 

It clicks, and something shifts. Monumental.

“Hi,” Tony whispers. “Hi Peter.”

Peter hums again, twisting the lapel of Tony’s jacket in his fist.

May shifts anxiously in the corner of his vision. “This is the only olive branch I’ll ever extend,” she whispers. “You’ll never get another chance to raise him. If you—right now, if you don’t decide to take care of this baby, Ben and I will adopt him and you’ll never see him again. I’ll fight you tooth and nail, Tony, we don’t need your money. But if you—do your—if you do the right thing, right now, we’ll help you. We’ll be there, and we’ll help you. Because you’re a damn mess but that’s your baby, he’s _yours_. We love him and we want him but he’s _yours_. And Mary, she—for some godforsaken reason, she believed in you.”

Tony hears her. He also hears the gears in his own brain turning, hears the screams of a thousand doubts because they know he’s about to take a chance, and the second they get too loud, Peter leans in and nestles his head on Tony’s shoulder. It feels like it happens in slow motion, and Tony holds him a little tighter, glad Pepper isn’t in here to see tears spring to his eyes. Tears he can’t wipe away, because he’s holding a baby. _His_ baby.

“Alright, Tony—”

“Honey, just give him a chance—”

“Ben, I’m not gonna—”

“I’ll take him,” Tony says, voice breaking stupidly as he turns to face them. He rubs Peter’s back, and the kid’s little hand slips off his chin and lands on his chest. He squeezes his shirt there too. It’s too much. It’s enough. It’s everything. “I’ll take him.”

May looks like someone shot her. “You’ll—you’ll take him?”

Tony nods, strangely hypnotized by the way Peter’s back rises and falls under Tony’s hand with his breathing. “I have no idea what to do. I mean. Pepper can take care of the legal stuff but I—I’ve got no idea what to do. At all.”

May’s face crumples, and she covers it with both hands, nodding. “Yeah, we know,” she says. “We’ll—we’ll help you. We’ll help you. You better let us help you.”

Tony nods, and he has no idea what he’s fucking done, but all his doubts telling him he’s wrong hit a wall— _this is my kid. My kid._ You can’t do it. _My kid._ You’ll screw him up. _My kid._ Your own father didn’t love you. _My kid._

None of it works anymore. Not even if it’s logical. Not even if it’s a stone cold fact. Maybe that’s why he was avoiding this. Looking at him too hard. Talking to him. Holding him. Mary knew that would do it. She knew. And he fucking knew too. And here he is, like a sap. Cradling his baby like the most precious thing in the world.

“What—what did it?” Ben asks, standing alongside May.

Tony scoffs, and holds Peter a little closer. He feels like a moron, because he’s been blatantly keeping his distance until this moment, and they don’t know what’s in his head or what was blocking him before the whole world exploded and May placed Peter in his arms. It had been done, set in stone, that night he first kissed Mary Fitzpatrick. Because he’s weak, susceptible, yearning for things he shouldn’t have, doesn’t deserve. He just took too long to catch up to the inevitable, come to terms with the truth of what had happened. What he really wants.

But as moronic as it sounds, after everything, he says it anyway. The mantra repeating over and over and over again in his mind, against all odds. 

Faced with losing him, there’s no other option.

“He’s—he’s my kid.”

~

Peter falls asleep with Tony holding him, and Tony feels like he can’t do anything ever again for fear of putting him down. Like he’s literally lost the use of his arms. Ben opens the front door for him so he can go tell Pepper what the hell is going on. She stares at him holding the baby for what feels like a lifetime, and then she nods at him. He tells her to “fix it” and somehow she knows what the fuck that means. He doesn’t even know what it means, but she does. 

Tony decides to stay here with them for the night while his people get his goddamn penthouse prepared for a baby, whatever the hell that’s gonna entail, and Ben packs up a bunch of Peter’s clothes while May Parker unceremoniously opens up unlike Tony ever expected her to.

They’re both sitting on the ground in the living room, and Peter is still sleeping in Tony’s arms. Tony feels like he’s sleeping too, like he’s gonna shoot up any second to the world he’s always known. But Peter makes a small noise and cuddles closer, his little hands periodically squeezing Tony’s jacket. He’s the one dreaming. Tony isn’t.

“Richard just—he knew Mary was better than him and he was threatened by it,” May says, wiping her eyes. “It bled into their relationship and it was becoming more of a competition. Ways he could one up her. They’d been partners since college, in and out of the lab, but she was getting more opportunities and he just...he hated it. She didn’t wanna deal with that shit”

Tony nods. He doesn’t know what the hell to say. 

“She’d always had a weird crush on you,” May says, looking at him.

Tony scoffs, narrowing his eyes and looking at her, trying not to rattle the baby too much with his movements. “What?”

May smiles, wiping her eyes again as more tears fall. “Yeah, she’s—she _was_ —two years younger than you but she still cut your pictures out of magazines and stuff. Ridiculous. She tried to act like she stopped doing it when she met Richard but she absolutely didn’t.”

Tony blows out a breath. His heart clenches. “I’m sorry, I, uh—I’m sorry I haven’t—behaved properly. I’m sorry I—I’m sorry it took this, to happen, to get me to...this point. I just. I…” He trails off, trying to find the right words. “I’m—I didn’t have the best relationship with my father.”

“Neither did we,” May says. She sighs. “I still don’t know if you can do it, Tony, but he’s...like you said, he’s your kid. And I haven’t been able to get him to fall asleep in my arms one damn time, and look, it’s going on an hour now. So. That’s something.”

Tony holds him a little tighter. 

“Do you...do you _want_ to raise him?”

Tony allows himself to be selfish, just for a moment. “Yeah,” he says, quiet. Not the Tony Stark he’s concocted for the public eye. Not their playboy.

“Then we’ll figure this out,” she says, tears hitching in her voice. She pats him on the shoulder and gets to her feet. “I’m gonna go see what Ben’s doing with the clothes. I want to bring some things to our apartment, too.”

Tony nods and watches her go.

He’s suddenly an insane person sitting on the floor of a dead woman’s place. Peter hums a little bit, puffing out little breaths through his mouth before he starts breathing normally again. Tony cranes his neck to stare down at him, but he can only see his wavy hair and his little arm. 

Tony sighs, swaying him back and forth a little bit, knowing from here on out, he’s gotta be better. He’s gotta be what his mother always thought he could be. He’s gotta believe in himself the way she did.

Peter’s counting on him.


End file.
